Board games are well known and widely used for educational, recreational and entertainment purposes. The playing of board games helps to promote logical and reasoned approaches to multi-faceted problems requiring forethought and reasoned consideration and application of the best of possibly numerous approaches in an effort to successfully complete the game.
Various board games have been devised to enhance the interest, education, and understanding of logical and strategic approaches generally required for such successful completion of the game. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 1,714,792 to Kurihara discloses a game in which victory is achieved by the first player who places on the game board a straight unbroken line of five playing members of the same color.
Other games are well known in which two or more players each compete to place a row or column of like-denominated playing pieces so as to achieve success when a pre-determined number of those pieces are so aligned. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 1,206,334, to Kohler discloses a plurality of parallel grooves provided in a game board, in which markers are directly placed into each groove by two or more players. However, only a single dimension of play is achieved in this game which is necessarily limited to the single direction of play along that single set of parallel grooves. U.S. Pat. No. 1,700,016 to Blanger discloses a checker board having a series of intersecting grooves in which checkers are positioned, those checkers being retained in the grooves and removed only when an intersection of the game board so allows. U.S. Pat. No. 2,528,792 to Seaman discloses a game board having a rectilinear array of grooves, to which spherical playing pieces are inserted. However, none of the aforementioned prior art games employs the broad concept of intersecting grooves in which opposing players direct their pieces so as to prevent subsequent alignment of an opposing player's playing pieces applied to the game board from a different orientation.